Honourable Mention Dance on Fire: Flash Point

The Blurb: Five years after the death of their only child Tiffany, Steve and Angie Rosen receive an unexpected guest to their Morro Bay, California home: their daughter. She comes with a tale of having suffered a terrible head wound in the fire that took their Kingsburg home, causing her loss of memory and migraine headaches that force her to hide from daylight in order to prevent.

Tiffany's re-emergence is treated like Manna from Heaven; however, her story is only half true. Tiffany is a vampire and their daughter in name only. She sleeps during the day and hunts for human blood during the night, and has come back to enact a twisted revenge upon those who ruined the plans of her master, the notorious vampire, Vincent. And she is not alone.

Five years after the terrible events that reshaped the Swedish Village, Kingsburg lies unsuspecting as five vampires descend upon her with a great evil in their black hearts.

Five years after old wounds have finally healed and the old fires were thought extinguished, Police Chief Michael Lopez and Officer Mark Jackson and their families find themselves surrounded when fires blaze anew. The good vampire, Nathaniel, has pledged his service to these people, but he is no longer among them. He lives high in the Oregon Mountains near the California border, seeking whether God might have a place in His kingdom yet for him.

When Nathaniel discovers that Tiffany has returned, will he be too late to stop her? And will his desire to protect his friends destroy what God has begun in him?

It will all begin with a Flash Point.

The Mention: If you are wondering why Flash Point, James Garcia Jr’s 2012 sequel to his novel Dance on Fire is receiving an Honourable Mention rather than a review it is because, since reviewing Dance on Fire, James and I have become friends and, to keep impartiality, I only mention rather than review friend’s work.

The book is set five years after the events in the first novel and concentrates, primarily, on the Lopez family. There was some nice character development around the family. The town itself is none the wiser of the prior events, protected from the truth by Lopez (now chief of police) and the mayor. Jackson became a vampire in the first book and has maintained a ‘good vampire’ ethos, being supplied with contaminated blood by the mayor and the chief and handing in his detective shield to become a beat cop on the graveyard shift. One man tries to reveal the truth through his blog but is passed off as a conspiracy nut.

The other main focal point was the vampire Tiffany, who waltzes back into her mom and dad’s life with a story of injury, amnesia and light sensitivity. The family had moved to a town a small distance from Kingsburg and Tiffany, along with her vampire friends, are decreasing the town’s population whilst they prepare to get revenge for the death of the vampire who turned her.

Like the first book there is a strong Christian-centric aspect to the book. Intriguingly, James adds a physical manifestation of the devil into the mix and I am curious as to where he’ll take this aspect in the third book. Flash Point is available on kindle.